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A BOY'S RELIGION 



BY 
EDWIN HOLT HUGHES 

ONE OF THE BISHOPS OF THE 
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



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j i? 



Copyright, 1915, by 
EDWIN HOLT HUGHES 



APR -6 1915 

©CLA398217 



X 

b 

) 



TO MY FRIEND IN YOUTH AND MANHOOD, 
THE REVEREND MILLARD PELL, 

AN EXEMPLAR OF 
A BOY'S RELIGION, 
A MAN'S RELIGION, 

A PASTOR'S RELIGIOUS INTEREST IN BOYS. 



CONTENTS 
PART ONE— THE BOY 

PAGE 

I. The Real Boy 15 

II. A Boy's Seeking 20 

III. A Boy's Working 25; 

IV. A Boy's Experience 31: 

V. A Boy's Carelessness 37- 

VI. A Boy's Consistency 41 

PART TWO— THE PARENT 

VII. Evangelistic Parents 49 

VIII. Evangelistic Atmosphere 54 

IX. Evangelistic Unity 59 

X. Evangelistic Good News 64 

XI. Evangelistic Warnings 69 

XII. Evangelistic Intercession 75 

PART THREE— THE PASTOR 

XIII. Pastoral Foresight 83 

XIV. Pastoral Interest 88 

XV. Pastoral Sacrifice 93 

PART FOUR— THE TEACHER 

XVI. The Teacher's Character 10 r 

XVII. The Teacher's Knowledge 107 

XVIII. The Teacher's Purpose 113 



FOREWORD 

The simple chapters that com- 
pose this booklet were written orig- 
inally for the Classmate on the 
invitation of the late and much 
lamented John T. McFarland. The 
Publishers and Book Editor have 
requested that the articles be placed 
in one volume. Although the au- 
thor did not write them with the 
intent that they should form a small 
book, he yields cheerfully to the 
request. 

The reader will please bear in 
mind that the writer has not sought 
to produce a scholarly and scientific 
treatise. That side of the general 
subject has stimulated much recent 
writing; and just now there is small 
need that additions be made either 
to its amount or to its excellence. 

9 



io FOREWORD 

The only claim for this contribu- 
tion is that it is human and prac- 
tical — and that the method admits 
of a certain warmth and intimacy 
of discussion. The claim might like- 
wise be made that the writer has 
walked all the paths that the book- 
let suggests — having been a Boy, a 
Man, a Parent, a Pastor, and . a 
Teacher. He would not deny that 
the chapters have grown out of 
experience and that they contain 
not a little hidden autobiography. 
Nor would he deny that he has 
largely avoided the technical theo- 
logical vocabulary. He entertains the 
profound conviction that the future 
theology will keep the essentials of 
the past theology, but that it will 
be cast less in the forms of the 
Roman Courtroom and more in the 
forms of the Home and Family. 



FOREWORD ii 

The author's sufficient reward will 
be gained if any boys are led by 
this modest little book into loving 
and serving relations with Him 

* Whose years, with changeless virtue 

crowned, 
Were all alike divine." 

Edwin Holt Hughes. 
Episcopal Residence, 

San Francisco, 
July 27, 1914. 



PART ONE 
THE BOY 



I. THE REAL BOY 
There are two kinds of boys. 
One kind you meet on the streets 
and in the homes; the other kind 
you meet in the books or in the 
speeches of some kindly people. Of 
course the boys you meet on streets 
and in homes are not all alike; and 
those you meet in books and speeches 
are not all alike. But the real boy 
must be found in real life, if he is 
ever found at all. Little Lord Faun- 
tleroy is fine, I guess ; and we rather 
enjoy reading about him. Yet it 
would not be well for us to suppose 
that boys usually act and speak as 
does this beautiful little fellow in 
the novel. 

On the other hand, it may be 
that the boy in the book is rougher 
than the boy on the road. Huckle- 
berry Finn is as interesting in his 
way as Little Lord Fauntleroy is in 
15 



16 A BOY'S RELIGION 

his. I think, however, that those 
of us who were boys once or who 
are boys now would say that the 
usual boy is tinlike Fauntleroy and 
unlike Finn. He is not as fond of 
handling dead cats as "Huck" was, 
nor is he apt to call his mother 
"dearie" all the time, as Fauntleroy 
did. He is not an angel and he is 
not an imp. 

So what a man says about a "Boy 
and His Religion" will all depend 
on where the man finds the boy. 
He may find the boy in his mind. 
Sometimes boys "make up" stories 
about men; and I suspect that some- 
times men make up stories about 
boys. It may be that they want 
to believe that boys are so and so 
because they have made up a story 
about boys that they would like to 
prove true. When Charles Dickens 
was alive, he used to say that he 
knew men who did that. You will 
remember that one man in Dickens' 



THE BOY 17 

book said that Oliver Twist was "an 
article direct from the manufactory 
of the devil himself." That was a 
pretty mean thing to say about a 
boy. The man who said it did not 
study Oliver Twist first; he studied 
a doctrine about all boys first. Then 
he wanted to believe that Oliver 
Twist was one more proof that what 
he thought about boys was true. 
This was not fair to Oliver; nor 
was it fair to all the other boys. 

Then again, an author or a speaker 
may think that he finds the boy 
almost in heaven. James Whitcomb 
Riley makes "The Hired Man" say, 

"I believe all children's good 
Ef they're only understood." 

There is a truth in this pretty and 
kindly couplet, but it needs to be 
handled "with care." This is espe- 
cially so when boys become older 
and more responsible. Once I heard 
a man talk about boys as if they 



18 A BOY'S RELIGION 

were all saints. He claimed really 
that boys were bad only when older 
people made them bad. The boys 
who heard the man say all these nice 
things about them seemed pleased, 
but I really think that they knew 
better. If you could have gotten 
them to tell all they knew about 
themselves and all they knew about 
other boys, they would have said 
that the man who was talking meant 
well, only he did not know. If 
we think honestly about our past, 
we shall say that, while at the very 
earliest period the poet could make 
us say, 

"And trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home," 

directly we began to carry about 
with us some other clouds that were 
not so glorious after all. 

This means that the only way to 
know the truth about boys is to 
know boys. The man who studies 



THE BOY 19 

science is always telling us that you 
must not get your belief first and 
then try to find a lot of facts to 
prove that your belief is true, but 
that you must get your facts first 
and then get your belief out of your 
facts. This rule is as good for find- 
ing out about a boy's religion as it 
is for finding out about a boy's 
body. You can find out about a 
boy's religion only by going where 
the actual boy lives. I knew a boy 
once who would not play baseball. 
If I should know only that one boy, 
I should make a big mistake about 
boys. 

So if I wanted to know about 
boys, I would not hear what the 
mother of Little Lord Fauntleroy 
thought, and then say, "That settles 
it"; nor would I want to know what 
the foster-mother of Huckleberry 
Finn thought, and then say, "That 
settles it." I would prefer to hear 
what fifteen or twenty fathers and 



20 A BOY'S RELIGION 

mothers thought, and even then I 
would want to know the boys my- 
self and to be very sure that every 
one of them was just a plain, every- 
day, natural, and normal boy. 

It is this sort of a boy that we 
are going to study in these chapters 
about "The Boy and His Religion." 
We shall find him in a good many 
places and we shall ask him to tell 
us about himself and how he feels 
and what he does about God. 



II. A BOY'S SEEKING 

The boy of whom I am now 
writing was a real boy in the sense 
that he existed, but an unreal boy 
so far as the way he acted was 
concerned. I hold this to be sure: 
that God wants us to be genuine. 
Whenever, therefore, we act a part 
in religion, we really cease to be 
religious at all. The point of this 
article, and of the one to follow it, 



THE BOY 21 

will be that, if we seek religion, 
that is, if we seek to be converted, 
or if we seek to do religious duties, 
that is, to live the Christian life, 
God wants us to be our real selves. 

This boy did not do this. When 
he came to seek religion, he acted. 
So I fear that he did not find what 
he thought he was seeking. As I 
remember him, he was not a par- 
ticularly bad boy. His first name 
was William, but we never called 
him that. I must admit that he 
did not have a very good chance 
at home. There were some reports 
in the town about his father that 
made me think that he was not 
as good a man as he should have 
been. I remember hearing that 
sometimes this father came home 
drunk, and I do know that he used 
bad language. The boy's father 
probably did not give the boy a 
fair chance to do the right thing. 

I do not recall the boy's mother. 



22 A BOY'S RELIGION 

I guess that she was a good woman, 
but I think that if she had been a 
religious woman I would have re- 
membered that fact. The boy's 
people were not rich. They lived 
in a small house. The boys did not 
go to school very long. When they 
were quite young they dropped out 
and went to work. This, I think, 
is another proof that this boy did 
not have a very good chance. 

In one respect the boy did have 
a good chance. He went to Sunday 
school and church, and there he 
heard about good things. I do not 
know why he went. Perhaps it was 
because his parents wanted him to 
do so. It may be that he went 
because he wanted to be with "the 
other boys." 

Now directly there came a revival 
meeting at the church. Every eve- 
ning special services were held. Our 
Sunday school teachers wanted us 
all to attend. The preacher would 



THE BOY 23 

preach and tell us what God wanted 
us to do, then he would ask us to 
come forward and kneel at the altar 
and seek to have our sins forgiven. 
We were told that God would give 
us new hearts and that he would 
help us to do right. 

One evening this boy's big'brother 
went to the altar. This big brother 
had many bad habits. He was 
somewhat like his father. He would 
get drunk, tell foul stories, and use 
profane language. He surely did 
need to be converted. I suppose 
that when he went to the altar he 
was sincere and wanted to lead a 
better life; and I judge that when 
the little fellow saw his big brother 
go forward, it touched his heart and 
he went forward too. I was sitting 
just where I could see both. I 
was glad that they had gone to the 
altar, even though I had not gone 
myself. 

Soon the older brother began to 



24 A BOY'S RELIGION 

groan and pray aloud. Doubtless 
he felt quite wicked. I think that 
he ought to have felt that way. 
He would roll his head from one 
side to the other, just as if he were 
suffering greatly. The small brother 
saw what the big brother was do- 
ing and he did the same. I can 
recall now that I did not like that 
in the least. I felt that the big 
brother ought to act in his natural 
way in getting religion, and that the 
little fellow ought to act in his 
natural way. 

I cannot now remember whether 
both the brothers claimed to be con- 
verted. I do know that the little 
brother did not turn out very well. 
A few years ago I visited the town 
where he had lived as a boy. The 
older brother was dead. He had 
killed himself long since by drink- 
ing rum. The younger brother, they 
told me, was living in an adjoining 
town. He was not a good man, and 



THE BOY 25 

it looked as if he would not live 
much longer himself. 

When I heard all this I could 
not help wondering how the younger 
brother would have turned out if he 
had sought Christ in his own boy- 
ish way. Boys are great imitators, 
they tell us. But I am certain that 
they should be very careful indeed 
never to imitate in religion in such 
a way as to act an untruth. 

It is my conviction that God 
comes to all who seek him in spirit 
and in truth. I fear that he will 
find it difficult to come to those who 
do not seek him in that way. The 
moral is that the boy should seek 
Christ in a boy's way. 

III. A BOY'S WORKING 

Our last chapter told of a boy 
who tried to be converted as if he 
were a man. Whenever a boy tries 
to do that, I fear that he does 



26 A BOY'S RELIGION 

not get converted at all. Now we 
shall tell of a boy who tried to do 
Christian work as if he were a man. 
And when a boy tries to do that, 
I fear that he really does not do 
any work at all. He goes through 
a man's motions, but he does not 
do even a boy's work. 

This boy, I judge, was ten or 
eleven years of age. He would arise 
in the meetings and tell how much 
he wanted to do. He would say 
that his heart was heavy for some 
of the people of the town. He 
seemed to feel that God had made 
him responsible for the conversion 
of the older people in that place. 
He was just like a little old man 
who had been made a dwarf by 
carrying loads that were too heavy 
for him. His talk was old; his 
manner was old; his spirit was old. 
He did not seem like a boy at all. 
Somehow I felt then that he was 
not doing what God wanted him 



THE BOY 27 

to do; for I am sure that God does 
not want a boy to be a man, and 
to carry a man's burdens too soon. 

I heard many years afterward 
that this boy's big desire to do 
God's work in making the people 
of that town better did not con- 
tinue after the boy became a man. 
Somehow I was not surprised. One 
other boy in that church is now a 
successful missionary in a foreign 
country. Another is one of the well- 
known preachers in this land. Sev- 
eral others are faithful members 
and workers in that same church. 
All these were living as natural boys, 
while this little fellow was trying 
to act like a man. The other boys 
did not like him very well; and I 
know that some of the older people 
must have felt that the boy was 
not quite himself. Certainly God 
would ask nothing more than that 
a boy should be a boy at his best 
and that he should do only such 



28 A BOY'S RELIGION 

work as would naturally belong to a 
boy. 

Do you remember that story in 
the Bible about David's trying to 
fight in the armor of Saul? David 
was still young; Saul was older and 
bigger. David had sense enough to 
see that the only way for him to 
fight was with the weapons that he 
himself could use. In the war time 
a man's heavy gun would quickly 
tire a boy to death 

And have you ever read in a 
book of history about those little 
people who, fully seven hundred 
years ago, thought that they ought 
to be soldiers and ought to help 
take the places where Jesus lived 
and died away from the enemies of 
Jesus? Suppose you find the right 
book and read a little bit about 
'The Children's Crusade." It is 
really the story of some boys, and 
of some girls, too, who tried to do 
what only men could do. Nearly all 



THE BOY 29 

of them died on the plains — of 
hunger and heat — and their small 
bones marked all the ways of travel. 
It was all a very sad story, and I 
believe that a sad story is always 
written whenever children try to do 
the work of men. 

In America we are now trying to 
stop what we call "child labor." 
For a long time little children have 
been hired to do what only full- 
grown men and women should do. 
Nearly two million boys and girls 
have been working in mills and fac- 
tories when they should have been 
going to school or playing in the 
fields. There are now many thou- 
sands of good people who say that 
all this must be stopped because 
they know that it is wrong to make 
little people do the work of older 
people. 

You will notice how natural are 
the children in the Bible. Read 
about the boy that picked up arrows 



30 A BOY'S RELIGION 

one day for Jonathan and so helped 
to save the life of David; or read 
about the little girl that told Naa- 
man how he could be cured of his 
sickness; or find the story of the 
way Samuel lived and worked in the 
temple, helping the old priest, and 
wearing proudly the coat that his 
mother brought him once each year; 
or read again about the little boy 
that aided Jesus to perform the 
miracle of the loaves and fishes; or 
read the tale of Saint Paul's nephew, 
who saved his uncle's life by using 
his wit as a young fellow well could. 
You will search the Bible all through 
without finding where any boy was 
told to do a man's religious work. 
God wants boys to be boys. He 
did not ask Moses or Paul or any 
of the other heroes of the Scriptures 
to do men's work until they were 
men. Even Jesus did not preach 
until he was thirty years of age. 
He was simply a boy in Nazareth, 



THE BOY 31 

doing the will of his parents, and, 
so, the will of God. 



IV. A BOY'S EXPERIENCE 

In order to make more real what 
has been said in the three previous 
letters, I am asking a boy to tell 
us w r hat he himself did and how he 
felt. This boy, let me confess, is 
now a man, and he is much in- 
terested in religious things. From 
what I know of him I can say that 
he was quite a normal boy, even 
as he is now a normal man. I told 
him that he must speak frankly; 
and this is just about what he said: 

"My father and mother were very 
religious people. They took me to 
church regularly. They made me 
"attend Sunday school. Sometimes 
they took me to prayer meeting. 
They had family prayers once each 
day. They were Puritans in their 
thought of life. They lived simply, 



32 A BOY'S RELIGION 

and they had nothing to -do with 
any form of 'worldly amusements,' 
as they always called them. Yet 
they were not morose, and our home 
life was full of cheer and occasionally 
of fun. My father was a hearty 
laugher, while my mother had a 
quick sense of humor. 

"All my earliest impressions of 
the Christian life were good. I said 
my prayers always before going to 
bed at night. Sometimes, when I 
forgot to do this, I would be a little 
troubled in my conscience, and I 
would get out of bed and kneel to 
pray, even when the night was cold. 
I recall when I first found out 
that there were some people in our 
neighborhood who did not confess 
Christ and did not go to church or 
have anything to do with its life 
and work. I felt sorry for these 
people, and I could not understand 
why they should be so foolish. I 
felt especially sorry about one man 



THE BOY 33 

who seemed so pleasant and, in gen- 
eral, so good and kindly, that he 
quite puzzled me. I used to pray 
that he might become a Christian. 
So far as I knew, he never became 
one. That puzzled me too. 

"But, although I felt this way 
about the Christian life, I somehow 
got the idea that I was not myself 
a Christian. As I review it all now, 
this was because I heard the preach- 
ers say so much about the new 
birth. I was not aware that I had 
been born again. In the section 
where I lived men and women were 
often converted after much loud 
praying, and then sometimes they 
shouted joyfully. I wanted to be 
converted like that. So while I was 
still young I went to the altar and 
tried hard to be converted in a 
special way. I did everything that 
I thought a boy could do, but I 
felt no such experience as I heard 
the older people describe. After long 



34 A BOY'S RELIGION 

seeking I became discouraged and 
ceased going to the altar. But I 
did join the church. I think that 
helped me very much. It kept me 
from doing many things that I fear 
I would have done otherwise. I 
have always been glad that I had 
this restraint upon me; and because 
of my own experience I rejoice when 
I see young boys joining the church. 
Several years later I was converted, 
though not without having gone off 
'into the world* a little distance ere 
I came back again. This second 
time I went to the altar again. 
But I sought simply to get my 
will into right relations to God and 
his purposes. I did not gain any 
great and sweeping emotions. 

"In the earlier years I did not 
do any Christian work, as such. I 
did try sometimes to keep other 
boys from doing certain evil things; 
and in one or two revival meetings 
I sought to get some young people 



THE BOY 35 

to come to Christ. Yet I did not 
know just how to do any real work, 
and I always had a fear that I 
would seem 'pert' if I tried to talk 
of their religious duty to people who 
were older than myself. After my 
will was surrendered I did some 
personal work, particularly while I 
was in college. I think that through 
my four years' course of study I 
lived a clean life and stood for the 
Master amid not a few temptations. 
But my fervor of work came as a 
growth, and almost, as the scriptural 
phrase is, without observation. Now 
for a good many years I have been 
considered a fairly active Christian/ ' 
When I questioned him a little 
further, as our train was speeding 
over a Western desert, this man 
said to me: "Well, I am glad that 
I managed to keep real in my atti- 
tude toward religious matters. I 
was religious as a boy and I think 
that I kept true to myself as I was 



36 A BOY'S RELIGION 

then. Now I am a man, and my 
own boys are growing up around 
me. Above all else, I want them 
to be Christian men. I do not 
want them to take big religious work 
too soon. Somehow I feel that their 
main duty now is just to be clean 
in their lives; to keep close to the 
church; to do the small service that 
appeals to them naturally; and to 
go on in quite a normal way until 
they are able to make it their 
primary business to work for 
Christ. ,, 

Directly he added, with a touch 
of sadness in his voice: "One of 
my boys seems to be getting care- 
less about religious matters, and I 
am afraid that family prayers and 
church services bore him a little bit. 
Sometimes I find myself wishing that 
he would get into a good revival 
meeting and get a new start. I 
want all my children to belong to 
Christ fully." 



THE BOY 37 

V. A BOY'S CARELESSNESS 

The friend with whom I had the 
talk on the train has two sons. 
One of them is still interested in 
religious things. It is not necessary 
to urge him to go to the services 
of the church. He frequently at- 
tends prayer meeting. He some- 
times speaks in the young people's 
meeting, though this seems just now 
to make him quite nervous. He 
plays tennis, and he is a real boy, 
yet he seems never to have de- 
parted from sympathy with the 
Christian life. I judge that his 
temptation to do so will come within 
the next two years. So I have 
written out a letter which I expect 
to send him. Leaving out the strictly 
personal items, it is about like this: 

My Dear E : I had a conversation 

on the train with your father the other 
day. I was pleased to have him con- 
firm what I had thought for myself — that 



38 A BOY'S RELIGION 

you kept up your interest in the church, 
and that you were still perfectly frank in 
saying that you were trying to lead the 
Christian life. 

Now all this makes me glad — for your 
sake, and for your parents' sake, and for 
Christ's sake. But I know, both from my 
own experience and from what I have 
seen of other boys, that a time of special 
temptation will soon come to you. So I 
am writing you to be faithful. I do not 
want you ever to look back on any period 
of your life with deep regret. Some men 
spend their later years in trying to fight 
against what they did in their earlier years. 
Because I know that this is wholly un- 
necessary, I take the liberty of writing you 
this letter. 

Soon you will begin to feel independent. 
You will want to do some things that your 
parents do not approve; and you will want 
to do some other things in your own time 
and way. Directly you may begin to 
think that being a Christian means being 
restrained. You will see other boys doing 
things that you desire to do; and you will 
not like to have your Christian life get 
in the way of your pleasure 

Besides this, you will begin to feel awk- 



THE BOY 39 

ward about the formal things of the Chris- 
tian life. You will prefer just a little not 
to sit in the family pew with the rest of 
the family. It will not be easy for you 
to go to the Communion. You will be so 
self-conscious that you will try to avoid 
speaking or praying in the young people's 
meetings. 

Now I warn you beforehand about these 
two things because, if you really under- 
stand them, and if you get the right atti- 
tude toward them, you will pass the period 
safely. About the first, the matter of 
doing some things that your parents dis- 
approve, let me advise that you talk freely 
with your father and mother. They have 
lived longer than you have, and it is fair 
to suppose that they know what is best 
for you still. And, as for the second mat- 
ter, do not pay too much attention to 
your own embarrassment. In due season 
you will conquer that, more or less. The 
one thing for you to do is to go straight 
ahead, counting yourself as belonging to 
Christ and refusing to treat yourself other- 
wise. Your father tells me that you have 
seemed religious all along, and that you 
have had no marked experience of con- 
version such as you hear some people tell 



40 A BOY'S RELIGION 

about. Do not let this disturb you. Simply 
be sure of your purpose to follow Christ 
now and to be true to him. He will care 
for all the rest, and you will find your 
own experience growing better and clearer 
as the years pass. 

For, after all, what God wants is the 
will to serve him. Some of the most faith- 
ful Christians I have ever known cannot 
tell how or when they were converted. 
All their lives they have loved Christ, and 
they have had no break in their experience. 
In this respect they have been like Christ 
himself. If you will simply follow Christ 
earnestly, he will see that your experience 
is exactly what it ought to be. 

But my special purpose in writing this 
letter to you is to warn you against what 
is sure to happen. You will feel restrained, 
and you will wonder whether you are 
really living your own life. Sometimes, 
it may even happen, you will wonder 
whether you are genuine and honest. I 
think that every young fellow meets this 
temptation. Some of the duties of the 
Christian life will become irksome to you. 
But you have discovered that you must go 
to school when you do not feel like going. 
Even as some day you will be thankful 



THE BOY 41 

that you were not allowed to drop out of 
school, so likewise some day you will thank 
God that your parents held you to the 
church and tried to keep you faithful to 
Christ. I will guarantee that you will feel 
just thus, if you will follow the advice of 
this letter. 

Keep this letter, and in ten years write 
and tell me exactly how you feel about the 
Christian life. I am sure that I can proph- 
esy what sort of a letter you will write. 
If you ever want any advice, talk with 
me, or, better yet, talk freely with your 
father. Meantime we will both commend 
you to the heavenly Father. God bless you ! 
Your Friend, 

E. H. H. 

VL A BOY'S CONSISTENCY 

You will remember that my friend 
had another son about whom he 
was anxious. This son had become 
careless rather than coarsely wicked. 
When he came to the time of in- 
dependence and his father felt that 
he ought not any longer to make 
the boy do certain things, this son 



42 A BOY'S RELIGION 

drifted out of real sympathy with 
the church and was not outright in 
expressing his purpose to follow 
Christ. I think that he is in a 
dangerous place. I could scarcely 
justify myself if I wrote earnestly to 
his brother and did not write to 
this son too. My letter to him, 
which I really expect to send, will 
be about like this: 

My dear H : I have known you 

for a long time, and I am an old friend of 
your parents. Indeed, I was at the church 
on the day when your father and mother 
brought you to the altar for baptism. They 
promised then to do their best to bring you 
up in the church and for Christ. I know 
that they have tried hard to meet their 
promise. You are surely blessed in one 
thing: You cannot help believing that your 
parents are good and sincere people. 
Charles Wagner once wrote that it was a 
fearful disaster when a young man ceased 
to believe in God, and that the disaster 
was almost as great when he could no 
longer believe in his parents! I think that 
Wagner was right. 



THE BOY 43 

And now you will soon be a man, your 
"own man," you say sometimes. I fear 
that with nearly all boys there is a time 
when the sense of freedom goes faster than 
the sense of responsibility. That was the 
trouble with the prodigal son. Perhaps, 
without knowing it, you are meeting that 
very trouble yourself. It is a wonderful 
time in a boy's life. I always tremble a 
little when I see it coming. You will not 
be angry with me if I say that I have 
already done some trembling for you. 

.This is not because I have felt that you 
were as yet coarsely unclean. I imagine 
that few boys go wrong in that way — at 
first. There is always a lowering of ideals 
and purposes before there is a lowering of 
conduct. Will you pardon me if I say 
that you have taken the first step? Al- 
ready your will is much stronger for rebel- 
lion than it is for obedience. If you were 
as bent on doing right as you are bent on 
having your own way about a few small 
matters, you would be a very strong young 
man. Several times lately you have not 
been at church. I was not at your home 
when the question came up, but I think 
that I can tell you what you said: "I don't 
feel like going to-day." I know, also, how 



44 A BOY'S RELIGION 

your father and mother felt as they went 
off to the service without you. 

Of course, you will say that going to 
church does not mean everything; and you 
may even insist that it is better not to go 
than to go unwillingly. But my point is 
that we all need all possible help if we 
are going to do right. If we attend a serv- 
ice of worship and will ourselves into a 
right mood about it, there is nothing that 
more stimulates our desire to be right and 
to do right. In fact, I do not think that 
there is any other institution on earth 
whose one aim is to get men to be right 
and to do right in all respects. There are 
other institutions that are engaged in try- 
ing to make men right in one respect or in 
several respects. The church, however, 
tries to keep men in the purpose to do 
right in all things. We all need something 
that will deal with us not as fractions, but 
as whole numbers. 

So my fear is that your staying away 
from that service means more than just 
that one thing. It is simply a step in the 
wrong direction. It may be followed by 
many such steps until at length you have 
gone far from that faith of your child- 
hood which meant so much to you. 



THE BOY 45 

Now, my boy, do not fail to keep close 
to good things. You will need them all. 
Temptations, of which you little know as 
yet, will soon attack you. Perhaps you 
have yielded to some things ere this about 
which you would not like your father and 
mother to know. This is only the more 
certain evidence that you are moving in 
the wrong direction. I want you to turn 
* 'right about face." 

Do you want my advice ? I will give 
it anyhow. Talk frankly with your~parents. 
Heed some public invitation and indicate 
that you are determined to do right and 
to follow Christ. One fine thing about 
a public confession is that it puts us where 
we must do right or else go back on our- 
selves. But, above all else, pray more 
and more earnestly, and ask God to fix 
your purpose beyond recall. Frankly, all 
this is just about what I did when I was 
almost exactly your age. I was really 
converted then, and I became again as a 
little child. I had no big emotions, but 
God did fix my purpose to do his will. 
That, I think, is always the essence of 
conversion. 

If you will do all this, you will be in 
danger no longer. Perhaps your first im- 



46 A BOY'S RELIGION 

pulse when you read this letter will be to 
tell me to look out for my own affairs. 
Your later mind will be different. Ten 
years hence you will be glad that I wrote 
you thus. Do not destroy this letter. 
Read it over occasionally. God bless you! 
Your Friend, 

E. H. H. 



PART TWO 
THE PARENT 



VII. EVANGELISTIC PARENTS 
If this subject shall seem peculiar 
to anyone, the very fact that it 
seems peculiar may reveal a great 
weakness in the evangelistic work of 
the day. Evidently "evangelistic 
parents" would be those who sought 
by all wise and earnest ways to 
keep or win their children for Christ. 
Yet doubtless our temptation is to 
lay undue stress upon the mere 
"ways." The School of Hearts must 
precede the School of Methods. The 
evangelistic heart will not only find 
ways of working; it will often suc- 
ceed in spite of its ways. The 
spirit of evangelism will triumph 
either through its fashions or over 
its fashions. 

Consequently, w r e shall try to ex- 
clude from this article all discussion 
of ways and means, save as these 
are deep and inner. The point is 

49 



50 A BOY'S RELIGION 

that what parents get for their chil- 
dren is likely to depend on what 
parents most want for their children. 
It is not only true that we do not 
gather grapes from thorns and figs 
from thistles; it is likewise true that 
we do not gather grapes from grape- 
vines or figs from fig trees unless 
our spirit sends us to the vines and 
trees. What we ask is what we 
get. What we seek is what we find. 
The door at which we knock is the 
door that opens to us. 

So the first question to which 
the parent must make an honest 
answer is this: What do I most 
desire for my children? And this 
answer is not to be secured from 
an abstract query made to one's 
own heart. Abstractly, there is but 
one possible answer for any parent 
who has in any degree the Christian 
sense of values. There are probably 
few fathers and mothers connected 
with any of our churches who would 



THE PARENT 51 

not say theoretically that their first 
and greatest desire is that their 
children might be followers of the 
Lord. In fact, often we find parents 
who are not themselves professing 
Christians, but who still show no 
little anxiety over their children's 
spiritual welfare and no little pride 
in their children's consistency of 
Christian life. 

Still it is evident that the evil 
powers that try to seize our children 
are not to be defeated by any good 
theory that we may hold, nor yet 
by any spasms of effort to win our 
beloved for the good. An evan- 
gelistic mood is not quite an evan- 
gelistic heart. An evangelistic effort 
is not an evangelistic habit. We 
must not only want our children to 
be Christians, but we must want 
that most, and we must want it 
all the time. 

Surely it needs no argument to 
show that the best and most natural 



52 A BOY'S RELIGION 

evangelist is the Christian parent. 
Isaac gets the cue of the mono- 
theistic life from Abraham. Lydia's 
children come to baptism and faith 
through Lydia. Other evangelists 
come seldom and stay briefly. Even 
the Sunday school teacher is a sort 
of weekly visitor. The most faith- 
ful pastor is not equal to the task 
of furnishing the religious atmosphere 
for the children of all his homes. 
The professional evangelist does not 
continue long in one stay. The 
parent is the most constant earthly 
presence for the child. The old 
Eastern proverb says: "God could 
not be everywhere, and so he made 
mothers.' ' The proverb is neither 
accurate nor impartial, but it does 
state the important truth that par- 
enthood has the best chance for con- 
stant evangelism. 

Perhaps this brief chapter could 
do nothing better than to insist upon 
an answer to this piercing question 



THE PARENT 53 

addressed to all parents who read 
these words: What do you really 
most desire for your children? What 
reply do you win for this question, 
not from your occasional wishes, but 
from your total and constant bear- 
ing toward your children? Have you 
really an evangelistic heart, or is 
your wish for each child primarily 
social, or primarily commercial, or 
primarily intellectual? Where do 
you put the emphasis in your own life 
as it relates itself to your children? 
Are you God's chief evangelist in 
your own home? 

It is not meant, of course, that 
the minor interests are not to have 
their part. But do you keep them 
minor, or do they become major? 
If your children judge by the spirit 
of your life what you most desire 
for them, what judgment will they 
be compelled to reach? Those who 
most eagerly desire the coming of 
the Lord's kingdom and who see its 



54 A BOY'S RELIGION 

deepest and most far-reaching lines 
of influence will not halt at saying 
that there is small hope for the 
salvation of the world unless we 
shall raise up a host of evangelistic 
parents. The Jewish church began 
in the tent-home of Abraham. He 
who runs may read. 

VIII. EVANGELISTIC 
ATMOSPHERE 

In the last chapter we used the 
phrase ''evangelistic atmosphere." 
The words guide us in a good 
direction, and we shall follow them 
a little further. 

There is surely a difference be- 
tween an evangelistic effort and an 
evangelistic atmosphere. The two 
are not contradictory, and they 
may act and react upon each other. 
An evangelistic effort may create 
an evangelistic atmosphere; and an 
evangelistic atmosphere is sure to 
issue into evangelistic efforts. Still 



THE PARENT 55 

we have all known homes which 
yielded occasionally to an evangel- 
istic mood and engaged in an evan- 
gelistic effort and which, for all that, 
did not maintain an evangelistic at- 
mosphere. 

For there is such a thing as a 
religious climate. There are arctic 
regions in the spiritual realm, re- 
gions so frigid that only the hardiest 
plants have any chance whatsoever. 
And there are tropic regions in the 
spiritual realms, regions so soft and 
soothing in their influence that they 
grow naught but flabby woods and 
dainty flowers. This figure of speech 
will help us to classify certain homes. 
Some homes would destroy any but 
the most vigorous spiritual life ; other 
homes would become mere spiritual 
hot-houses and would nourish such 
delicate spiritual life as would wither 
at once even upon transfer to a 
temperate zone, religiously speaking. 
All this is a matter of climate. 



56 A BOY'S RELIGION 

The figure of speech is a scriptural 
one. The psalmist says of one that 
feared the Lord, "Thy children shall 
be like olive plants round about thy 
table." He again expresses the hope 
that "our sons may be as plants 
grown up in their youth." Our 
ritual says in one place that only 
those that are "planted in the house 
of the Lord shall flourish in the 
courts of our God." But can plants 
grow in any atmosphere? What hap- 
pens to rose bushes and dahlias when 
they are set out in the Nevada 
deserts? What becomes even of 
sturdy oaks transplanted to arid re- 
gions where they reach down their 
eager roots all in vain for the waters 
of life? The efforts of cellar plants 
that grow weakly toward the light 
and air of the one small window 
often suggest pathos. We see them 
sometimes, lying wan and bleached 
in the semi-darkness, and yet grow- 
ing toward the light! If only they 



THE PARENT 57 

had the right atmosphere, with sun 
and dew and rain, they would be 
green and fruitful boughs! 

Now all this does not overstate 
what may happen in very many 
homes. The character of parents 
must furnish an evangelistic atmos- 
phere. This climate cannot be se- 
cured artificially. It may even be 
brought to its best more or less 
unconsciously, so far as the parents 
are concerned. Moses is not apt 
to be aware of the shining of his 
own face when he deals with the 
children of Israel. And when the 
children of Israel move toward their 
spiritual best, they are not so apt 
to be aware of it either. They 
simply feel at home with its radiance. 
Yet the face and character of Moses 
will help to make the spiritual atmos- 
phere in which they dwell. There 
are fathers and mothers who are so 
unaffectedly religious, so beautifully 
and almost unconsciously devoted to 



58 A BOY'S RELIGION 

Christ, that they create a winning 
religious atmosphere. 

This makes it less needful that 
they should engage in any direct 
evangelism for their children. Those 
olive plants are in the right soil, 
and the sunlight and dew of heaven 
get a fair chance at them. The 
parents do not need to use their 
own clumsy fingers to open petals 
and to shape sepals. God makes 
them the agents of his own climate. 
Long before the child can analyze 
a situation he can feel the gentle 
pressure of that atmosphere, and he 
can yield to its call for life and 
growth. The gardeners of the Lord's 
nursery will still have to stir the 
soil, and lay the rows, and prevent 
undue shade and excessive heat. 
But the climate is doing gracious 
work all the time. 

It is evident that such a home 
as this cannot be secured by any 
direct effort. It can come only as 



THE PARENT 59 

the kingdom of God always comes, 
without haste and without observa- 
tion. It comes only from the living 
of the life of Christ. This is the 
type of home described by Robert 
Burns in his "Cotter's Saturday 
Night." Such a home represents 
that house of the Lord and that 
court of God wherein sons and 
daughters shall be as plants growing 
into grace, blooming into beauty, and 
fruiting into service for the Lord of 
the Garden. 



IX. EVANGELISTIC UNITY 

In the modern athletic period a 
phrase has passed from the field of 
games out into all the realms of work- 
ing. That phrase is "team work." 
It signifies unity of effort in order 
to secure victory. It likewise sig- 
nifies a willingness to put aside per- 
sonal display for the sake of the 
team, as when one makes what is 



60 A BOY'S RELIGION 

called a ''sacrifice hit." We shall 
give the phrase as holy a meaning 
as we can well assign it if we say 
that in the home there should be 
team work and that the father and 
mother should keep an evangelistic 
unity. 

The Scriptures assert the need of 
this, and the command is, "Be not 
unequally yoked together with un- 
believers." The Roman Catholic 
Church sees the point and insists 
that, even though a member of that 
church shall marry a Protestant, the 
children shall be brought up under 
a unity of training. Broad as John 
Wesley was, he put some things into 
the Discipline that stressed the ne- 
cessity of wife and husband working 
together in the religious life. 

It is wise that the unity shall find 
an outward expression. Less and 
less, as the years advance, do we 
find husband and wife belonging to 
different churches. The feeling is 



THE PARENT 61 

that the children ought not to be 
confused in their religious ideas. If 
on Sunday the father goes in one 
direction to church while the mother 
goes in another direction, the little 
people can scarcely fail to be mixed. 
The usual explanations will not suf- 
fice. Only conscience should divide 
a home in this way; and the child 
will naturally feel that, if his parents 
are separated on a matter of re- 
ligious conscience, that matter must 
be very large and real. To take 
sides against either parent is not 
easy. It is not surprising, therefore, 
to find that usually the home must 
be united religiously ere there can 
be an evangelistic unity brought to 
bear upon the lives of the children. 

But, important as this matter is, 
it is not the deepest thing in the 
problem. Without doubt parents 
may remain separated in formal 
church membership, while still being 
thoroughly united in their desire 



62 A BOY'S RELIGION 

that their children shall belong to 
the Lord. God has ordained that 
both halves of parenthood shall be 
joined in order that there may be 
a social unit. Where either parent 
fails of the evangelistic spirit, one 
half of the power is lost. It is 
even worse than this: the one half 
of the power that seeks to work 
works tinder obstruction. Thus it 
comes to pass that a home that is 
divided religiously is worse than di- 
vided; it is cleaved and split into 
more than two parts. The jangle 
is there, even though it be not 
noted by parents and children. 

Now every pastor knows the mean- 
ing of this description. He has seen 
instances where the hand of a fool- 
ish father or the hand of an equally 
foolish mother kept a child away 
from a profession of Christ and from 
membership in his church. It is 
thus to him a day of gladness when 
he sees a home brought into religious 



THE PARENT 63 

unity. He knows then that he has 
not simply added one more recruit 
to the army of the Lord; he knows 
that he has established one more 
training place for the King's soldiers. 
He has unified the most important 
forces that make for the religious 
life of the children. The so-called 
solitaire that has two religious set- 
tings in the family is not a solitaire 
at all. The doubtful gems quarrel 
with each other. 

Let it be said that too often it 
is the father who fails to give him- 
self to the making of religious and 
evangelistic unity in the home. The 
mother of Zebedee's children still 
comes to the Lord with her children 
while Zebedee himself is absent, be- 
ing interested in other affairs. In 
some measure this is due to causes 
too large to be discussed now. But 
it must be due in some measure to 
the fact that we do not often enough 
remind the father of his evangelistic 



64 A BOY'S RELIGION 

duty. The cradle of every new-born 
child is a call to each parent to put 
life on a holy basis. It is a great 
thing when an immortal soul is sent 
into our keeping. If we can put 
deserved emphasis upon that won- 
derful fact, every cradle will become 
an altar at which two parents shall 
join themselves in a holy unity of 
purpose and work to the end that 
in God's season all the children shall 
be led into the Father's house. 

X. EVANGELISTIC GOOD NEWS 

Does this title seem strange to 
any one? If so, let us explain that 
the meaning relates to the manner 
of telling the gospel rather than to 
the story of the gospel. The gospel 
without doubt is a good announce- 
ment, a happy message, a real evan- 
gel. We would suppose that its tell- 
ing would quickly fit itself to the 
nature of the truth, and that evan- 



THE PARENT 65 

gelists everywhere would be found 
aglow with a large and serious joy. 
The man who brings good new T s 
should bear a face and wear a 
manner that comports with his mes- 
sage. The glad gospel should have 
a glad teller. 

Let no one suppose now^ that we 
are going to omit the cross. The 
gospel has its serious side. But 
Jesus, who died on the cross, had 
much to say about joy. Even when 
he was within a few hours of Cal- 
vary he spoke of the joy that he 
would give as a legacy to his fol- 
lowers. That joy, he said, was to 
be "full." In agreement with this 
word, our religion has been a glad 
religion. Some say that it is really 
the only singing religion. Its gen- 
uine followers in all the centuries 
have been people who knew praises 
and hallelujahs. 

Inasmuch as parents are divinely 
appointed evangelists, they must be 



66 A BOY'S RELIGION 

careful not to lose the sense that 
the gospel is good news. Children 
are just at the age when they are 
seeking for happiness. Life to them 
is very good and very rosy. More 
than this, they feel that they are en- 
titled to happiness. Their elders feel 
the same way about the little people. 
A gloomy child is not of God's ap- 
pointing. Whenever we see one such 
we feel that there has somewhere 
been mismanagement, or maladjust- 
ment. Even when the Bible speaks 
of little children in heaven, it de- 
scribes them as playing in the streets 
thereof. "Playing/' mind you! In 
the better country the nature of 
youth is taken into account. God 
provides play in the New Jerusalem. 
Nor is it trifling with sacredness 
to say that parents must show the 
glad side of the gospel if it is to 
appeal to the eager and bounding 
heart of youth. This side cannot 
be put to the front by artifice. No 



THE PARENT 67 

father or mother can say, "I will 
now be glad in order that I may- 
show my children how good our re- 
ligion is!" The gladness must be 
inward, working into outward ex- 
pression. Parents must really "enjoy 
religion." 

Sometimes it almost seems as if 
they had it, but did not really enjoy 
it. It is a restraint, a guide, and 
even a comfort, but it is not a joy. 
The father speaks of it without a 
smile. The mother nearly always 
weeps when she tries to give testi- 
mony — and her tears do not seem 
to be the tears of gladness. Doubt- 
less the expression is not a true 
indication of the inner feeling, but 
the expression ought to be just that. 
We have no right so to set forth 
our good as to allow it to "be evil 
spoken of." A glad religion ought 
to make a glad countenance. 

Our children must have the gospel 
of the shining face. None other 



68 A BOY'S RELIGION 

will appeal to them and claim them. 
Later the emphasis will move toward 
the serious side, and some time it 
will take on the solemnity of eter- 
nity itself. But in the earlier years 
the call that persuades childhood is 
the call of the Christ who promises 
joy. If that old tradition which 
told that Christ was never known 
to smile were true, our gospel would 
be put at a disadvantage in its ap- 
proach to young life. A smileless 
Christ would not be the ideal for 
youth, nor would a smileless messen- 
ger be the most persuasive repre- 
sentative of our Lord, j 

That all this has its relation 
to parental evangelism cannot be 
doubted. The constant impression 
of the gospel comes to the child 
from the parents. In some ways 
they are the child's gospel, or at 
any rate the Bible in which he 
reads his gospel. A father or mother 
with a jaundiced or mournful re- 



THE PARENT 69 

ligion is not God's best teller of 
his best news. 

The psalmist saw this clearly. In 
a passage of much insight he offers 
the prayer, ''Restore unto me the 
joy of thy salvation," and soon he 
adds, "Then shall I teach trans- 
gressors thy way, and sinners shall 
be converted unto thee." 

We may be well assured that if 
this be true of all tellers of the 
gospel, it is especially true of those 
parents whose joyful behavior as 
being themselves children of the 
heavenly Father becomes a real evan- 
gelism to the children of their own 
homes. 

XL EVANGELISTIC WARNINGS 

It may be that some one, reading 
the last chapter, said, at the close: 
"It is true that there is an evan- 
gelism of good news; but there is 
also an evangelism of bad news. 



70 A BOY'S RELIGION 

Or, if it is not accurate to state it 
in that way, there is, at any rate, 
a very stern side to evangelism, and 
this side should not be neglected." 
The suggestion is just, and we now 
proceed to urge that in any con- 
sistent and biblical evangelism warn- 
ings must have their due stress. 

Jesus did not hesitate to lift up 
the final warning in the vision of 
hell. Without any question what- 
soever, the Bible is not scant in its 
teaching of retribution. Perhaps we 
have used too exclusively the figure 
of speech based on "fire," because 
that figure is so vivid. The New Tes- 
tament uses "darkness," and "filth," 
and "worms," and "banishment," 
and "prison," and various other em- 
blems. Reduced to their very lowest 
terms, these figures of speech must 
have some supremely serious mean- 
ings. While the Scripture gives us 
no right to be dogmatic about the 
details of future punishment, it does 



THE PARENT 71 

compel us to present the assurance 
that this life bears on the next life 
in a real and vital way. 

Perhaps in dealing with the young 
we are instinctively drawn to use this 
teaching carefully. Our Saviour's ac- 
tual dealing with any little child 
would not give us warrant for making 
this appeal primary. Still, we should 
not permit the child to entertain 
any foolish delusions. He ought to 
be impressed by the sure fact that 
the consequences of sin are lasting, 
as well as with the other fact, that 
all our knowledge of this present 
life would lead us to believe that 
in the long run condition will answer 
to character. One cannot, philosoph- 
ically or scripturally or experimen- 
tally, avoid the conclusion that there 
must at the last be a huge difference 
between the dwelling of the bad 
and the dwelling of the good. That 
main point may be urged even on 
childhood. Notwithstanding the cry 



72 A BOY'S RELIGION 

raised by some persons in our own 
day about the stern teaching of 
generations gone, most thoughtful 
and just adults will testify that a 
doctrine of punishment for sin held 
them away from many wrongs and 
was an effective factor in their moral 
education. 

But there are some concrete mean- 
ings of this subject for the present 
life. In recent years we have been 
using some of them in scientific 
instruction. It may not be a pleas- 
ant thing to show the child pictures 
of the human stomach and bowels 
burned and blistered by the effect 
of alcohol; but our laws in most 
of the States and in all the Terri- 
tories compel just that sort of teach- 
ing. At the present time many 
good people are in doubt as to 
the proper limits of so-called sex 
education; but there is all but unan- 
imous agreement on one point, 
namely, that the new generation 



THE PARENT 73 

must somehow be taught that dread- 
ful penalties follow after impurity. 

The truth is that in all depart- 
ments of our teaching the warning 
element has a large part. The 
teacher tells of a day of judgment, 
not only represented by the arrival 
of examinations, but represented as 
well, and more deeply, by the arrival 
of life's severer tests. All worthy 
instructors repeat at times the sub- 
stance of our Lord's parable about 
the wise and foolish virgins — about 
the danger of being caught unpre- 
pared for the emergency, and about 
the necessity of having the reserves 
ready to bring out to meet the crisis. 
The point is that intellectual pen- 
alties are visited on intellectual sins. 

Now, that element of warning 
must be kept in our evangelism. 
We must tell the youth not only 
that there are large gains to be 
sought, but likewise that there are 
terrible losses to be shunned. Per- 



74 A BOY'S RELIGION 

sonally, I do not think that it is 
wise to give our sons and daughters 
the idea that forgiveness carries with 
it the remission of penalty. That 
threadbare story about the nails that 
were driven into the post to repre- 
sent the boy's misdoings, and that 
were pulled out to represent each 
conquest over the particular sin, is 
true to life. The scars remain in 
the post even after the nails have 
been pulled. The popular song has 
the truth of it, 

The bird with a broken pinion 
Never soars so high again. 

The gospel saves men from dan- 
gers that are the most real. Our 
children should be earnestly taught 
that the final goal of sin is ruin. 
The soft prophet is not the genuine 
evangelist. Our doctrine of God 
reveals One who will not trifle with 
sin. 



THE PARENT 75 

XII. EVANGELISTIC INTER- 
CESSION 

The need of intercessory prayer 
in connection with revivals has often 
been urged. Pentecost was simply 
the beginning of the great awaken- 
ings that have been preceded by 
earnest and long-continued praying. 
Formal logic, as well as religious 
logic, would indicate that if prayer 
were necessary in order to bring a 
revival in a community, prayer would 
likewise be necessary in order to 
bring a revival into an individual 
heart. Hence there is such a thing 
as evangelistic intercession. 

It is probably just as well for us 
to confess both to ourselves and 
sometimes to the subjects of our 
prayers the mystery involved in 
praying for others. We believe in 
the freedom of the will; and we be- 
lieve, also, in the power of inter- 
cessory prayer. But just the rela- 



76 A BOY'S RELIGION 

tion that our prayer may take to 
the free will of another person it 
is difficult to say. We could scarcely 
claim that our praying may put 
compulsion upon him and do away 
with his free choice of salvation. 
Indeed, if we felt that we could 
turn a man into a machine by our 
prayers, it is doubtful whether we 
would be willing to take that fearful 
responsibility. If God will not force 
a man to himself, we may be sure 
that he will not assign to prayer a 
power which he himself declines to 
use. Prayer is given us to be used 
within the realm of God's will, and 
God's will is not that any man 
should be compelled into his king- 
dom. Whatever else intercessory 
prayer may accomplish, there still 
remains one personal center, one 
last citadel which it cannot capture 
from an unwilling soul 

Still, there is left to intercessory 
prayer a wide field. The prophet 



THE PARENT 77 

said to the children of Israel, "God 
forbid that I should sin against the 
Lord in ceasing to pray for you." 
When the Israelites knew that the 
form of the old friend and leader 
was often bowed in prayer for them, 
it would be easier for them to do 
the will of God, harder for them 
to fly in the face of God's servant 
and of God himself. Who can doubt 
that a mighty wave of intercessory 
prayer would aid in making the at- 
mosphere in which men would more 
readily yield to the Lord? Who, 
indeed, has not felt something of 
this sort when hundreds of heads 
were bent in silent prayer? It is 
much as if we passed into the 
climate of God. Our prayer is 
doubtless a part of the pressure that 
the Spirit puts upon human hearts. 
There may be a sense in which our 
prayer is borne by the ministering 
Spirit of God to the very person 
for whom it is offered. 



78 A BOY'S RELIGION 

For the Scripture seems to indi- 
cate that prayer is one form of 
service which we can use for each 
other. It may fail because it is so 
often used alone instead of with its 
companion forms of service. The 
farmer would scarcely expect much 
from his acres if he planted and 
did not till or reap, or if he put 
his furrows in the sunshine and then 
declined to provide irrigation. Each 
thing is necessary, but each thing 
will not do the work alone. It must 
be even so with prayer. 

God has certainly decreed that 
there should be a close relation be- 
tween prayer and work. Some 
one long ago said that t 'prayer was 
the work of the soul, and that 
work was the prayer of the hands." 
Unquestionably sincere prayer drives 
to work for the object prayed 
for. Evangelistic intercession in the 
closet, if it be genuine, will lead 
to evangelistic effort in the open. 



THE PARENT 79 

Thus there are really two forms 
of evangelism, prayer and work. It 
is no hazard to say that God can 
give small heed to a prayer when 
the one who offers it is too much 
afraid of man to do the other 
human part of evangelism. The 
path of true prayer will lead in 
due season to the very face of 
the man whom we would lead to 
Christ. 

Now while all this is general, it still 
has its special application to parents. 
It may be that our very nearness 
to the children and our privilege of 
association with them will lead us 
to neglect prayer in their behalf. 
Many parents would confess that 
their most earnest prayers for the 
children began after the children 
went away from the home. This 
must mean that up to that time we 
had allowed our direct contact with 
them to do away with prayer for 
them. While it is easy to offer 



80 A BOY'S RELIGION 

some justification for this course, and 
even to plead its naturalness, it may 
yet reveal a danger. We should pray 
for our children while they are still 
with us. We shall be stronger and 
more persuasive in dealing with 
them, if our sincerity be strengthened 
by frequent appeals to God in their 
behalf. At the family altar they 
should be straightly brought before 
the throne of grace. There are those 
who say that the weak point in 
modern evangelism has been its lack 
of vigorous and constant intercessory 
prayer; and it may be that this 
is the weakness of family evangel- 
ism. If God can do so in righteous- 
ness, he will not deny the cry or 
annul the effort of those fathers and 
mothers who intercede and work for 
the salvation of their children. 



PART THREE 
THE PASTOR 



XIII. PASTORAL FORESIGHT 

In the previous treatment of the 
boy and his religion we have dealt 
somewhat with general principles, 
somewhat with the boy himself, and 
somewhat with his parents. But 
there is another party to the duty 
of evangelism as related to the boy. 
That party is the pastor. 

The first equipment of the pastor 
for this particular work is the ability 
to see the long issue and to work 
for it. For several years the boy 
may be a burden rather than a 
carrier of burdens. He cannot be a 
heavy contributor to the finances of 
the church ; nor has he had sufficient 
experience to count much as an ad- 
viser. A pastor can bring many 
children to Christ without bringing 
many dollars into the church treas- 
ury or many statesmen into his own 
official board. Some of the lower 
83 



84 A BOY'S RELIGION 

motives are wholly lacking in work 
for children. The conversion of one 
rich adult may mean more for im- 
mediate finances than the conver- 
sion of scores of children may mean. 
If a pastor should be a "hireling," 
to use Jesus's dreadful and piercing 
word, the call of the children is 
not very persuasive. 

But if a pastor be thinking of 
Christ's cause, as that cause will be 
in his town ten or fifteen years 
hence, the call of the children be- 
comes imperative. Those rollicking 
boys will be men then, fathers of 
families themselves. They will be 
holding their places as merchants, 
judges, bankers, doctors, plumbers, 
builders. The middle-aged pastor, 
when he returns to his old charge 
after many years, gets this lesson very 
impressively. He sees in the church 
sense the meaning of that word out 
of the Bible, "Instead of the fathers 
shall be the children." Those laugh- 



THE PASTOR 85 

ing girls of the old days are matrons 
now, leading their own children into 
the services of the church. It is so 
easy to see all this when it comes as 
a tribute to achievement rather than 
as an incentive to toil. 

Now unless a man be a seer so 
that he can get that vision clearly, 
he is not likely to be an earnest 
evangelist for children. Immediate 
interests will engross him. Quicker 
harvests will entice him. The Scrip- 
ture speaks of one who "is blind 
and cannot see afar off." The words 
might well be used of one who 
neglects to win children for Christ. 
The short-sighted pastor who does 
not eagerly gather the lambs into 
the fold has the most evil form of 
near-sightedness. It is pointed out 
occasionally that the accounts of re- 
vivals reveal this lack of foresight. 
The papers say "sixty conversions, 
mostly adults/ ' In reality this state- 
ment is doubtless meant often to in- 



86 A BOY'S RELIGION 

dicate that the meetings were power- 
ful enough to reach and convert the 
older people. If the phrase should 
be taken to mean that the conver- 
sion of adults was more important 
than the conversion of children, we 
would quarrel with its meaning. 

For God has given us too many 
examples to leave us in any doubt 
as to the effectiveness of his work 
among the children. Preachers are 
fond of telling that David Living- 
stone was the only person converted 
in a special meeting, and that the 
elders deemed the revival a failure! 
If only they had been blessed with 
foresight! They would have seen 
that in claiming that small boy for 
Christ their pastor was getting ready 
to answer the outstretched hands of 
all Ethiopia. Without doubt it was 
the biggest day's work that pastor 
ever did for his Lord. 

We are aware that all this repre- 
sents a truism. But we are aware, 



THE PASTOR 87 

also, that truisms are truisms simply 
because they are so very important 
in their meanings. That talk about 
the "future generation' ' is really very 
great talk. Sometimes we must all 
regard it as the greatest talk. The 
children are our bonds toward the 
coming time. They are the only 
agents through whom we can send 
our life on into the earthly life. 
They are the only hopes we may 
have for all the faith we hold most 
dear, for all the causes that appeal 
to the eternal best in our own hearts. 
God saved the future to him- 
self by means of the Child of Beth- 
lehem and Nazareth. It is no won- 
der that his own Son calls us so 
insistently and tenderly to the care 
of the children. Jesus needs to-day, 
and always, far-sighted pastors who 
will claim the future men and 
women by claiming the present boys 
and girls. Samuel soon becomes a 
prophet. John soon becomes the 



88 A BOY'S RELIGION 

forerunner of Christ. Timotheus 
soon stands by the side of Paxil 
in the plan for the conquest of the 
world. Beloved pastors, those chil- 
dren are your earthly futures! 

XIV. PASTORAL INTEREST 

It is not often that our relations 
with people begin upon a distinctly 
religious basis. We may begin our 
acquaintance in an inquiry room or 
at an altar. Usually, however, our 
early approaches to a life are social. 
We are "introduced." Or we make 
our own way forward without any 
formalities. Before Jesus talked to 
Zacchaeus of the deeper things of 
the Kingdom he dined with him, 
this being merely the prelude to 
that appeal which was to win the 
publican to the right life. Indeed, 
it is scarcely natural that two peo- 
ple, unknown to each other hitherto, 
should begin their relations by dis- 



THE PASTOR 89 

cussing the deepest things. When a 
man's first word to us relates to 
our duty to God we often feel that 
there is something forced in the 
situation. More than that, we may 
even feel that the man is putting 
God at a disadvantage. If all this 
seems to protect religious speech un- 
duly, it has at any rate one virtue: 
it makes all the other lines of life 
mere preliminaries. They are the 
approaches. Religion is the goal, 
the very temple of life. We may 
well be glad that it has so many 
vestibules. 

However important this social ap- 
proach may be in dealing with adults, 
it becomes especially important in 
dealing with boys. Their social na- 
ture is strong. They are susceptible 
to attention. We can often detect 
them "hanging around/' waiting to 
be recognized. Their slightly older 
playmates will sometimes accuse 
them of "tagging on," that is, of 



90 A BOY'S RELIGION 

trying to get into company where 
they are not wanted. This is itself 
merely an evidence of that social in- 
stinct that craves satisfaction. Occa- 
sionally the outreach of that social 
instinct is so eager as to be pathetic. 

That eager outreach of the boy's 
social life is the preacher's best 
chance for evangelism. It is more 
than a chance: it is an invitation, 
extended both by the boy himself 
and by the God who made the 
boy. It is almost as if the boy said : 
"Here I am waiting to be captured. 
I am just bound to be related to 
folks. That is the reason why the 
poolroom draws. It is this mood 
that gives the saloon its opportunity. 
Cannot the preacher see that I am 
waiting for him to get ahead of the 
bad things?" 

Therefore, the first great pastoral 
need in dealing with the boys is a 
warm human interest. This interest 
cannot be assumed. The average 



THE PASTOR 91 

boy is an unconscious detective. 
Whether he can quite define the 
situation or not, he will know the 
difference between the man who 
seeks him for his own sake and for 
Christ's sake, and the man who 
regards him as a candidate for church 
membership and so as a trophy of 
his ministerial cunning. 

So the interest in the boy must 
be real and deep. It must be force- 
ful enough to lead the preacher to 
write him a letter when it is known 
that the boy has done well in school 
or has graduated with credit from 
the grades. It must follow the boy 
knowingly through the varied stages 
of his advancement, whether in 
scholarship or athletics or in any 
other natural interest of youth. One 
such preacher I knew years ago. 
Long after he had left the pastorate 
in a certain town I would keep find- 
ing full-grown men who would tell 
of the way in which his interest 



92 A BOY'S RELIGION 

followed them. The boys never for- 
got him. When they reached the 
seriousness of middle age, the very 
mention of this preacher's name would 
at once make them kindle with loving 
remembrance. And many of them 
were in the Kingdom and were vitally 
connected with the church of Christ 
because this pastor's human interest 
would not suffer them to escape. 

It all comes back, of course, to 
the one thing that Saint Paul glorifies 
in his great psalm. All else fails 
but love. The mere word "love" 
will not conquer the boy. In fact, 
it is likely that its use may make 
him self-conscious. But the fact of 
love for him will do wonders with 
him. What scholarship will not do, 
and what even sacrificial toil will 
not do, and what martyrdom will not 
accomplish, that love will do with 
that socially eager youth. There is 
a marginal reading somewhere in the 
Old Testament that says, "Thou 



THE PASTOR 93 

hast loved me out of the pit." The 
reference is to the way in which 
the love of God lifts men out of 
their moral dangers. The servant of 
God can in his sphere love men 
out of the pit. His love is a lifter. 
The pit waits for the feet of the 
boy. Sometimes the pit seems to 
conquer. But God and the man 
of God can conquer the pit. The 
boy can be lifted from its darkness 
and filth by that loving human in- 
terest which is the preacher's surest 
way to the heart of youth. 

XV. PASTORAL SACRIFICE 

Very often we make the mistake 
of assuming that work with children 
is easy. Some of our figures of 
speech encourage this mistake. Chil- 
dren are "plastic"; older people are 
"hardened/ ' The figures of speech 
have their meaning, but we should 
be careful not to make them into 



94 A BOY'S RELIGION 

errors rather than into truths. Or 
we may virtually imply that, inas- 
much as the bending of the twig 
makes the inclining of the tree, after 
once you have given the twig the 
right direction, the whole problem 
of the tree is solved. Of course 
this is far from correct. Any or- 
chardist will teach us more wisely 
than that. 

Nor should we suppose that de- 
light and ease are the same thing. 
We sing the hymn, 

"Delightful work, young souls to win !" 

and we may readily pass to the 
conclusion that the work is de- 
lightful because it is easy. We 
might as well say that, because 
Stradivarius enjoyed making violins, 
his work was not difficult! Instead, 
we find that he often poured the 
glad sacrifice of months into the 
making of a single instrument. The 
work was delightful, not because it 



THE PASTOR 95 

was easy, but because the workman 
loved the result. That result was 
the "joy that was set before him." 

There is a general consideration 
against the assumption that work 
with children is easy, namely, that 
no great work is ever a smooth and 
jaunty task. The gourd that grows 
over night will wither over day. 
The ease of its development is the 
measure of its ease of decay. The 
big things, whether they be Magna 
Charta, Reformation, Revolution, or 
an oak tree, are not hurriedly grown. 
And a human life is the largest 
thing provided for in the creation 
of God. It would be strange if its 
best and finest development were a 
product easy to gain. 

Sometimes, also, we have this im- 
pression of easy spiritual results with 
children because some one else does 
the difficult work and we take the 
result as a mere matter of course. 
We are surely prone to do this 



96 A BOY'S RELIGION 

with the intellectual education of our 
children. We turn the little people 
over to the public schools, and we 
do not always appreciate the fact 
that they are educated only be- 
cause teachers feel the tug and strain 
many hours of thousands of days. 
But the sacrifice is there whether 
we recognize it or not. Is the in- 
tellectual education of our children 
easier than their spiritual education? 
Nor is it any overstatement when 
we say that to win and hold the boy 
requires peculiar sacrifice. The boy 
must meet a large range of coarser 
temptation from which the girl is 
freed. She seldom hears profanity; 
she knows little of the lure of cigar- 
ettes; the saloon is not for her; she 
does not carry a latch-key with a 
view to late hours! But all these 
and other forms of allurement coax 
the boy. It may not be hard to 
get him to start in the Christian life, 
if indeed he has left his first love; 



THE PASTOR 97 

yet to keep him in the way of Christ 
is the work of years. It cannot be 
done by any easy wave of the hand. 
It is not accomplished in any one 
brief service. The work that truly 
evangelizes the boy is a service many 
years in length. Any other thought 
is superficial and dangerous. It is 
simply a big blunder to think that 
because boys are easily reached, 
they are easily kept. The true 
evangelism of youth is the most 
difficult thing because it is the most 
important thing. 

The rules of the church plainly 
reveal where the difficulty will come. 
It is the long continuance of the 
work that costs the price. One 
meeting may win the boy to an 
allegiance. It will require many 
meetings to train and confirm him 
in the way of the Lord. It is just 
this fact that leads so often to an 
answer which, as every conscientious 
pastor feels, is a poor compromise 



98 A BOY'S RELIGION 

of himself. How seldom have we 
been able to answer fully and un- 
equivocally the question, "Have the 
rules respecting the instruction of 
children been observed?" The full 
answer to that question is the meas- 
ure of full pastoral duty. That an- 
swer can be won~only out of sacrifice. 
The lesson would not be complete 
without saying that sacrifice in the 
Christian sense does not necessarily 
mean strain and pain and sorrow. 
It may rather mean joy and glad- 
ness. Jesus saw joy beyond the 
cross. If Simon the Cyrenian saw 
what life really was, he felt joy be- 
neath the cross. The load of life 
must be pulled anyhow. The yoke 
of Christ can be cushioned by a 
love of the task and, more still, by 
the love of Him who calls us to 
the task. When a burden is actually 
his burden, he himself waits to fur- 
nish the spirit that makes the easy 
yoke and the light load. 



PART FOUR 
THE TEACHER 



XVI. THE TEACHER'S 
CHARACTER 

There is a suggestive verse in 
one of the Gospels which declares 
that great crowds came to Bethany 
"not for Jesus' sake only, but that 
they might see Lazarus also whom 
he had raised from the dead." But 
they were thus brought into contact 
with the Saviour. Doubtless, if we 
could discover the personal histories 
of that olden time, we would find 
out that many of those who came 
to see Lazarus saw some one far 
greater, and even that they expe- 
rienced that spiritual resurrection 
which is the achievement of the 
Christian faith. 

It needs only a quick review of 
our early experience to convince us 
how true this illustration is. We 
had an interest in some person, and 

IOI 



102 A BOY'S RELIGION 

this interest was directly transferred 
to Christ. It led us to some part 
of Bethany, and Jesus was there. 
Very often this human mediator was 
a Sunday school teacher. We found 
ere long that this teacher had been 
raised from the death of trespasses 
and sins. We believed in him. His 
character appealed to us as being 
high. He rang true. He had the 
first essential of a religious teacher 
in that he was himself religious. 
What he taught was not contradicted 
by what he did. His word and his 
deed did not quarrel with each other. 
We knew that he was really good. 

Now character has an industry 
that is all its own. It is pervasive 
also. Like the shadow of the tree, 
it often goes where the man cannot 
go. It works even when its owner 
is absent. It can be summoned to 
the witness stand in the twinkling 
of an eye. It is influential in all 
realms, but it is particularly in- 



THE TEACHER 103 

fluential in that realm where the 
first object is to produce character. 
Like produces like, we say. How 
can darkness make light? Or how 
can the unclean fountain send forth 
clean waters? Somehow we keep 
the conviction that a man's work 
in the spiritual region cannot possi- 
bly be any better than the man. 
He talks when he is silent. He 
works when he is idle. He appears 
when he is absent. When he and 
his word clash and fight, he is likely 
to be victor as against his word. 
If he be a good man, he himself 
is salt; he himself is light; he him- 
self is truth; he himself is life. 
God still follows his own highest 
example and uses an incarnation in 
order to make Himself known. Often 
a Sunday school teacher is that 
incarnation. 

Now boys have keen eyes and 
quick intuitions. They may be easily 
deceived at first, but in due season 



104 A BOY'S RELIGION 

they will know the teacher for what 
he is. In this respect they all have 
the advantages or disadvantages of 
the group spirit. 9 What one does 
not find out another will discover. 
Nor are they good keepers of se- 
crets. The seal of silence is not 
yet fastened tightly on their lips. 
The teacher's inconsistent act, seen 
by one, will soon be known by all; 
and after that the teacher must get 
new and strong credentials ere he 
will be trusted again 

All this is good for the teacher him- 
self. We have all known men and 
women who were saved by the ne- 
cessity of their own influence. While 
they were trying to bring the boys 
to Christ, the boys brought them to 
the same Master. The teacher- 
evangelist evangelized himself. He 
found that action and reaction were 
equal and in opposite directions — 
in Sunday school work as well as 
in physics. The prayer of his life 



THE TEACHER 105 

became a prayer for utter consist- 
ency. He longed to be a good man 
because he knew that character was 
the most efficient evangelist. Boys 
are not only very curious, they have 
likewise a large human interest. 
They can be brought where Jesus is 
if they feel that they can there 
see a Lazarus whom Jesus has raised 
from the dead. 

Does not Jesus himself give us 
this lesson in its fullness? He is 
not merely the gospel of God; he is 
the evangelist of that gospel. It 
was necessary that he should tell us 
that God was holy; but it was just 
as necessary that he should show us 
the divine holiness in his own life. 
If the world should lose faith in 
the character of Jesus, it would 
quickly lose faith in the gospel of 
Jesus. A sinful Messiah could not 
be a complete Saviour. Jesus teaches 
the way, the truth, and the life, 
because he is the way, the truth, 



io6 A BOY'S RELIGION 

and the life. He is his own religion. 
There is a certain sense in which 
every teacher must be the same. 

There is, moreover, a deep hu- 
man conviction on this point. Peo- 
ple are insistent that the teachers of 
youth shall not be corrupt. They 
demand this of public school teach- 
ers. It is a well-known fact that 
an evil reputation makes a disqual- 
ification for secular teaching. How 
much more shall we make this high 
demand for spiritual teaching? 

It is said that a famous infidel 
once visited the home of a saint. 
He left sooner than he had intended 
and gave as his reason that, if he 
stayed in the home another week, 
he would become a Christian in 
spite of himself! The saint's char- 
acter was doing evangelistic work. 
Shall not a good teacher's character 
invite a class of impressionable boys 
into fellowship with Christ and into 
his blessed service? 



THE TEACHER 107 

XVII. THE TEACHER'S 
KNOWLEDGE 

What should a teacher of boys 
know in order that he may lead 
boys into the religious life? An- 
swers to this question will vary 
according to the viewpoints of those 
who make reply. Some will make 
the intellectual emphasis too exclu- 
sive and will urge a rule that would 
drive nine tenths of our Sunday 
school teachers from their work. 
Others will make the spiritual em- 
phasis too exclusive and will urge 
a rule that would fill our schools 
with teachers that have zeal without 
knowledge. Still others would com- 
bine the two emphases and would 
urge a rule such as God has adopted 
in selecting the great leaders of his 
church. Paul and Calvin and Luther 
and Wesley were all providential 
men, and they were all both in- 
tellectual and spiritual. They knew 



io8 A BOY'S RELIGION 

with their minds, and they felt 
with their hearts. Sunday school 
teachers in their minor realm may 
not be able to be great thinkers or 
great mystics, but they should strive 
to love God with all their minds and 
souls. This double preparation will 
make them more efficient as evan- 
gelists of boyhood. 

They should know the Bible. 
The Scriptures reveal Jesus as the 
end of their revelation. He him- 
self said that the Scriptures should 
be searched because they testified of 
him. He was speaking, of course, 
of the Old Testament. Still, the 
reason that he gave for searching 
the Old Scriptures applies far more 
to the New. The statement is often 
made that, while more Bibles are 
sold than ever before, fewer Bibles 
are read and studied. Probably 
there is no accurate way of finding 
out whether this is so. If it be so, 
then there is all the more reason 



THE TEACHER 109 

why the Sunday school teacher 
should join with the pastor and 
parent in the effort to fix the Bible 
in the mind and heart of youth. 
Deeper than this is the fact that 
the Bible seems to have a peculiar 
power of conviction. It is quick 
and powerful. It does pierce. It 
is a discerner of the thoughts and 
intents of the heart. The Bible 
is the greatest evangelist, and the 
teacher should know the Book so 
well as to give that evangelist a 
full chance to do its work. 

Teachers should know the boy. 
We must all feel sometimes a sense 
of resentment when some academic 
psychologist looks learned and pro- 
ceeds to instruct those who have 
been dealing in practical psychology 
for many years. There are now 
in existence statistical tables show- 
ing certain tendencies in the life 
of childhood. If we are ever tempted 
to feel that much of this work is 



no A BOY'S RELIGION 

theoretical and mechanical, we may 
still get its main value. We must 
know the boy ere we can effectively 
teach the boy. It will not do to 
try to win him with figures of 
speech based on wee femininity. 
Miniature doll houses and small 
sewing kits belong to girls' classes. 
The teacher must know how to se- 
lect the boy's Bible from the big 
Bible. There are portions of the 
Book that are peculiarly fitted to 
appeal to boy life. Those portions 
cannot be found and used unless 
the teacher knows the boy as well 
as the Book. At the close of an 
address to boys months ago, a little 
fellow said, as he plunged from the 
room, "Gee! that man knows all 
about us, doesn't he?" This meant 
that the speaker was a practical 
Christian psychologist. He had at 
least a part of the equipment for 
winning boys to Christ. He knew 
where boys lived, and he knew how 



THE TEACHER in 

to speak to them in the terms of 
their own lives. 

Teachers should know Christ. 
Strange as it may seem, it is pos- 
sible for them to know the Bible 
with technical accuracy without 
knowing him. In his later years 
Phillips Brooks wrote to a friend 
a transcript of his own personal 
experience with the Master. He 
said that all of life's experiences 
more and more took their meaning 
from Christ. He added that this 
was no mere figure of speech. "He 
knows me, and I know him. It 
is the realest thing in the world. 
And one wonders what it will grow 
to as the years move on." The 
man who wrote those words knew 
Christ. He was thus invincibly sure 
of his gospel. The boy is a very 
real person. The more the teacher 
really knows Christ, the more will 
the boy feel the sense of reality in 
the teaching. This knowledge of 



ii2 A BOY'S RELIGION 

Christ comes only from life with 
him. Peter gave his confession at 
Caesarea Philippi because he had 
been living with the Master. Others, 
seeing Jesus's tears, might say that 
he was Jeremias. Yet others, seeing 
his stern rebuke of sin, might say 
that he was Elias. Still others, hear- 
ing only his gospel of repentance, 
might say that he was John the 
Baptist. But Peter, having lived 
those months with the Lord, reached 
the fuller and truer creed and de- 
clared that Jesus was "the Christ, 
the Son of the living God." His 
knowledge of Christ came from his 
life with Christ. Only so can any 
teacher of youth come to an ac- 
quaintanceship with the Lord that 
will make him an efficient evangelist 
of boys. 

Without doubt, also, we come to 
this knowledge of Christ for the 
inspiration that will send us to the 
proper study of the Bible and of 



THE TEACHER 113 

the boy. Only the love of Christ 
has enough constraint to keep one 
faithful for years to the holy and 
serious task of evangelizing youth. 
When once we really know him we 
shall not rush through a few minutes' 
study of the lesson and on to a 
hasty and superficial dealing with 
the boy. We shall, rather, teach as 
if the Great Teacher watched both 
our preparation and our approach 
to the soul of boyhood. Then we 
shall be more skillful in bringing 
many a little lad into the presence 
of Him who can multiply his powers 
and possessions so that later multi- 
tudes shall be fed by his truth. 

XVIII. THE TEACHER'S 
PURPOSE 

Sometimes we must all think that 
the story of Philip and the eunuch, 
as we have it recorded in the Acts, 
is a kind of biblical description of 



ii4 A BOY'S RELIGION 

a real Sunday school. Philip seems 
to have been a good man. He was 
likewise a knowing man in the 
Scriptures. But his character and 
his knowledge were both turned to 
a very definite aim. Ere long his 
pupil was asking, "What doth hinder 
me to be baptized?' ' The door of 
the church stood open on that desert 
way. The teacher had met his pur- 
pose and so had come to victory. 

All the elements of a class are 
present in this account. We may 
allow that the teacher is unusually 
direct and purposeful, and that the 
pupil is unusually responsive. In a 
way we may say that both atti- 
tudes are well-nigh ideal. But the 
big point is that the teacher was 
after the main thing. The end of 
the Scriptures was Christ, and the 
goal of the teacher was Christ. The 
outer way was desert, but the spir- 
itual way proved a garden path 
whereby grew the tree of life. The 



THE TEACHER 115 

chariot moved, but a soul moved 
even more significantly. Had Philip 
dallied with a literary question the 
opportunity had passed. Had he 
discussed the abstract nature of 
prophecy, the interview would have 
issued into abstraction. As it was, 
Philip reached Christ in his teach- 
ing, and the eunuch reached Christ 
in his faith. The lesson ended in 
the pledge of baptismal waters. 

The eternal lesson for passing 
teachers is all here, even though 
the itinerant school was rather un- 
conventional, and even though the 
pupil was full-grown. The aim of 
all Sunday school teaching is Christ. 
Until the teacher is dominated and 
possessed by that one purpose, he 
is not a genuine teacher. The ideal- 
ist may find many weak points in 
Sunday school work. He would 
doubtless be compelled to admit 
that the very weakest point was 
the lack of a definite and con- 



n6 A BOY'S RELIGION 

stiming purpose on the part of many 
teachers. 

That definiteness is the conquer- 
ing mood elsewhere. The architect, 
the engineer, the banker, the politi- 
cian, the carpenter, the plumber — 
all these know what they wish to 
do, and they go toward a clear 
goal. If they do not do so, their 
work is marred and they class them- 
selves with the inefficient s. The 
world's work is judged by the way 
in which it meets its purpose. The 
teacher's work must be estimated by 
the same rule. Now without doubt 
the teacher's main purpose is to 
keep or to bring the scholars within 
a vital and obedient relation to 
Jesus Christ. If a teacher does that, 
he succeeds. If a teacher does not 
do that, he fails. That purpose is 
his compass, and it alone can keep 
him from drifting. That purpose is 
his North Star, and it alone can 
keep him from wandering. That 



THE TEACHER 117 

purpose is his life, and it alone 
can prevent the death of the teacher 
as a teacher. 

Therefore, before every class comes 
to its session, the teacher should ask 
himself, "Why am I to teach to- 
day?" After the class adjourns, the 
question should be, "Why did I 
teach to-day?" While the class is 
in session, the question should be, 
"Why do I teach now?" Nothing 
short of this sacred definiteness will 
suffice. Without it teaching becomes 
general, hazy, secular, entertaining, 
frivolous — anything save efficiently 
spiritual. 

And this purpose will select its 
own material. Strange as it may 
seem, it may employ a chariot ride 
as a vehicle toward the Highest. 
It may sometimes choose desert 
rather than city for its field. The 
purpose elects ways and means, as 
well as the subject matter of teach- 
ing. It accommodates speech to 



n8 A BOY'S RELIGION 

the pupil, working its way adroitly 
to the center of life. It goes not 
too rapidly lest it leave the pupil 
so far behind that he cannot hear 
the saving word. The purpose be- 
comes a glowing passion. It gives 
knowledge heat as well as light. 
It gives character power as well as 
beauty. It is the teacher's Geth- 
semane and his transfiguration; his 
cross and his crown. 

Nor is all this a bit of vain 
idealization. We have all known 
just such teachers — men and women 
touched into a divine success by 
the power and definiteness of their 
evangelistic purpose toward their 
scholars. Sometimes these teachers 
have been learned; sometimes they 
have been far from technical scholar- 
ship. But they have all been par- 
takers of the one Spirit. Whether 
we find them on the lonely road 
that leads down to Gaza, or in the 
ecclesiastical palace on the city's 



THE TEACHER 119 

hill, they are the Spirit's partners 
in that blessed task of bringing 
young life into the company of the 
redeeming Lord. The prayer of each 
teacher should be, "God, make me 
such!" The prayer of each church 
should be, "God, give us such!" 



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